Red Sox Playing In Australia?

THE Boston Red Sox, one of the world's most famous baseball teams, are coming to Australia for a Major League game at our own field of dreams - the Sydney Cricket Ground - next year.

Red Sox officials watched the Danny Green-Roy Jones Jr fight at Acer Arena on Wednesday night as guest of Events NSW chief executive Geoff Parmenter. We understand negotiations have been taking place with Red Sox management for several months about coming to Sydney to play a yet to be announced Major League rival around late March.

The game would be beamed live back into the US and would be an official Major League game and not a trial. The Red Sox are considered the Manchester United of American baseball and would prove a huge hit Down Under.

I'm pretty sure that the Red Sox are actually supposed to be the Chelsea of American baseball. Chelsea always played in the same stadium, have a lot of history, and endured a long championship drought that ended a few years ago.

I assume it's nothing more than a non-sportswriter who knows the Red Sox are a very popular MLB team and tried to quickly think of a comparison that non-sports-minded readers would understand. (Except that soccer/football is a sport. Hmmm.)

As if it makes much of a difference, I'm pretty sure that since we'll be into Daylight Savings Time by then it'll be 15 hours difference and the game(s) would start at 4 AM. I'm pretty sure Australia doesn't go back to Standard Time until late April, or else it'd be 5 AM. But 4 AM is a purdy good bet.

I can definitively say that if a game begins at 4:00 a.m. I will miss at least the first 3 innings, without apology. I can neither stay up that late nor get up that early without ruining my entire day. If this is true, then it's a fuck-you to the fans, and I'll just say fuck you back, at least until 6 or 7 a.m.

I think the whole thing is a fuck-you to the fans. I understand the rationale for playing in Japan--or Korea or Taiwan--places with genuine interest in baseball and talent pools for major league teams. But from what I can see in a few minutes of googling, Australia has baseball the way the United States has, say, rugby. It's a curiosity.

So, maybe MLB is excited about the publicity--but if MLB really wanted to offer a hat tip to baseball fans everywhere it would be looking to play in Mexico or, you'll pardon the expression, Venezuela, or, you'll doubly pardon the expression, Cuba.